Demis Hassabis
speaker
3,420 appearances
27 recordings
18 series
first heard Feb 2024
last heard 7 Jul
Demis Hassabis’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 23 in all, peaking in Jul 2026 with 16.
Appearances
By the time he's five years old, he begins competing in tournaments, sitting on a telephone book...
On top of a chair so he could get his head over the table.
He was relentlessly competitive.
That is something that's going to be repeated over and over again.
I think I heard him say one time that half his brain is dedicated to competition.
He is ferociously, ferociously competitive.
And so when he is six years old, a renowned chess player and a television commentator goes up to Demas' dad and says, hey, your son is the best six-year-old chess player I have ever seen.
And Demas says, what are you going to do when someone tells you that?
My parents were fairly normal people living normal lives, and a renowned expert is telling you this.
His father responded to the message as though instructions had been handed down from God.
And for the next half a dozen years, weekend after weekend, he bundled his young son into the family's van and drove him off to tournaments.
The father-son duo spent nights in sleeping bags laid out in the back of the van, and other times they found a cheap hostel and shared a bunk bed.
Remember, his parents didn't have a lot of money.
I imagine my parents had a lot of arguments about money because we didn't have much, Demas said.
Chess consumed every weekend and every day of school vacation, squeezing out the easy recreation of a normal childhood.
Demas could barely imagine what just living might mean.
He had never tried it out.
And so Demas also found himself in a very volatile environment,
Later on, you'll understand that he hates to relinquish control.
And you see this a lot with people that had childhoods like this.
Showing 641–660 of 3,420 · page 33 of 171
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